Russell Brand, Lady T, Pisher Bob and Preacher John

Russell Brand's new book Revolution * is an impressive contribution to political philosophy, a field which during the past thirty years or so has not been overly populated with interesting work. Although Lady T was not terribly keen on the very idea of 'society', probably not even she could, with any consistency, deny the importance of the question of the possible effect on society of great economic inequality. She would presumably think that on the whole the effect is positive. Still, someone has to have lost the race, even if only a small group of what Francois Hollande calls les sans-dents. Compared with the refreshingly robust and engaged, albeit callous, ignorant and vindictive, approach of Lady T, both Pisher Bob and Preacher John cut very poor figures indeed. They have in common that they would reject most of Brand's argument not as false, but as irrelevant; for them he is addressing completely the wrong question.